From Despair to Hope: Women's Right to Own
and Inherit Property POLICY, Kenya National
Commission on Human Rights (December 2005)
Full Document
(English) Order for
free email to
me
The right to own and inherit property is a crosscutting
right that traverses the realm of civil, political, economic,
social and cultural rights. This right is central to the true
empowerment of everyone in society (men, women, boys and
girls) and is a key developmental right. It is the common
right to all societies and cultures. It is central to securing
the dignity of all members of the society.
Emerging legal and social trends, as they relate to the
ownership and inheritance of property, indicate a practice
that has largely worked out to the detriment of women in
virtually all communities and social classes in Kenya. They
include the laws relating to property, to marriage and
dissolution of marriage, land registration systems, and the
social and cultural attitudes that determine the actual
enjoyment of these rights.
Compounding the problem is the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has
caused massive destitution, displacements, blame-passing and
mistrust in nearly all communities in Kenya. The high stigma
associated with it has increased the vulnerability of women in
this regard. In no other community in Kenya is the twin
problem of societal and cultural practices - which
discriminate against women and thereby translate into
widespread of HIV/AIDS - more stark than within Luo Nyanza.
It is against the backdrop of the realisation of this
continuing trend of violation of womens (especially, but by
no means limited to widows) right to property ownership and
inheritance rights and the urgency of the problem in the face
of HIV/AIDS pandemic that the POLICY Project Kenya ( funded
by the Futures Group) and Kenya National Commission on Human
Rights (KNCHR) (funded by the Governance Justice Law and Order
Sector reform program) came together inspired by the same need
to work on enhancing the enjoyment of this right by women in
Kenya.
|